


Will it get better?

by JaceRMontague



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 15:30:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4185108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaceRMontague/pseuds/JaceRMontague
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day Henry woke up excited for dinner with both of his mothers, by the end of the day could he have lost them both?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Will it get better?

Emma walked through the silent hallway, the heels of her boots clicking against the marble floor of the mansion. The mansion, it was so… _empty_.

Every step she took echoed throughout the hallway, actually, it was that quiet in the house that each step echoed throughout the entirety of the mansion. Every breath Emma took would bounce off all four walls before disappearing into the nothingness that surrounded the house and smothered Emma. She was certain that her heartbeat could be heard from the attic as she passed Regina’s office. As Emma walked through the hallway that she felt stretched for miles upon miles, she noticed that she could smell Regina’s perfume of choice lingering in the air. She walked through the house, finally nearing the end of the hallway and as she reached the kitchen door she realized she could smell cinnamon in the air too, the spice was entangled in the air with the perfume, as she looked around she saw there were fresh apple turnovers on the counter-top, ready for the trio, Emma, Regina and their son, and their dinner tonight, Emma walked to the plate and flung it at the wall, watching as shards of porcelain and the remains of apple turnovers hit the ground.

The woman in the red leather jacket sat atop a stool at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, she roughly wiped away tears that she hadn’t realized had fallen with the heel of her palm and placed her forehead against the cold marble counter top where a heart-wrenching sob ripped through her chest. She stayed there, her tears quickly forming a puddle under her face, she wished that the tears would stop but at the same time she felt that if they fell faster and the puddle became a pool and she were to drown, she wouldn’t mind.

At one point or another she must have fallen asleep because the next thing she knew, she was being awoken by her mother.  
“Emma,” Snow said as she gently shook her daughter awake, her pale hand against the worn red leather on her daughters shoulder. “Emma, you need to wake up, you need to go to bed” she whispered into the eerie darkness that filled the room. Emma sat up, her back aching and shoulders tense as she straightened, her head ached and felt as if it was being stabbed a thousand times over, her body was weak and her eyes burned, she’d wept herself into dehydration. She opened her eyes and saw nothing, she rubbed them and tried again, she saw the outline of her mother’s body, “what time is it?” she croaked her throat was burning  
“its two am, sweetheart” Snow said gently, Emma had been hiding in the kitchen for more than twelve hours. Emma groaned, and sighed, tears slowly filling her eyes again.   
“How’s Henry?” She asked, she should have spent the last twelve hours with him rather than in the kitchen of his other mother.   
“In bits, he’s still awake, or at least he was when I left him with David, he’s not stopped crying”  
Emma wiped another stray tear, thankful it was too dark for her mother to see that she was crying too.

As discreet as Emma thought she was being about her crying Snow heard her sniffle and choke on her own breath. 

  
“Oh, sweetheart” Snow said as she wrapped her arms around her daughter.  
The two women stayed where they were in the pitch black kitchen for several minutes, Snow holding her daughter, comforting her, while Emma wept into her mother’s chest.

Eventually Emma stood up and Snow removed one hand from her daughter, keeping the other around her shoulder.  The former queen led her daughter out of the kitchen and through the silent hallway, the silence was more smothering now than it had been twelve hours prior, Emma couldn’t decide if this was down to the fact it was now dark, and therefore silent outside of the house, or because she was beginning to acknowledge the pain in her heart, but either way, the silence in this hallway was choking her and she wanted to escape. She was in desperate need to run down the hallway and burst out of 108 Miflin Street and to keep running. She didn’t know where to, she just wanted, no, she needed to  escape, but she was couldn’t because her mother was still holding her, soothing her – or at least attempting to soothe her – and Emma needed that. She needed to be looked after and soothed, in the same way she knew that Henry needs to be looked after and soothed, in fact, she knew Henry needed this probably more than she did. What she didn’t know was how well she could give these things to him, actually, she didn’t know if she could give these things to him at all.

Snow led her daughter to David’s pick-up truck with the promise they would collect Emma's cruiser the next day, or rather, later that day as it was now nearing 3am, she made sure Emma was in the truck,shut the passenger door, and then got in her own side of the truck. She started the engine and looked at her broken daughter before looking at the road and puling away from 108 Milfin street. As they cruised down the main street Snow looked at Emma again, “Sweetheart, it will get better you know?” Emma looked at her mother.  
“Mom. I know you're trying to help but I real cant deal with a hope speech right now. And I know you mean  well but the only thing I want right now are shots”   
“I get it hurts, but drinking isn't a solution, it wont help,” Snow began, glancing at her daughter before looking at the road “and besides, there's no where open anyway” she finished, she had wanted a drink too, not shots of course, but perhaps something stronger that the wine that was kept in the apartment, She was hurting too.

Snow pulled up outside the apartment and walked Emma up the stairwell and into the main room, where David was still awake with a mug of coffee in his hand. Emma glanced around the room and saw that baby Neal was asleep in his bassinet that had been set up next to Snow and Davids bed and that her son was asleep on top of their bed, clutching the duvet in his fists, his face was tear streaked, from where she was stood on the other side of the apartment, barely past the open front door, she could see that his thick brown lashes were soaked with tears.

She walked towards the bed slowly, as she neared she saw that his breathing was shaky and that tears still fell rapidly down his face, he wasn’t asleep at all. She sat at the edge of the bed and stroked his mop of hair softy.   
“It will be okay, wont it Mom?” he whispered coarsely as tears streamed silently down his face.  
“Of Course it will, kid” Emma replied softly.

Henry did, eventually, fall asleep, his cries gradually gave way to snores. Once he was asleep, Emma stood and walked back to the kitchen where her parents were waiting for her, she slid past them and reached into a cupboard behind Davids head, she stretched to reach into the back of the cupboard and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, she set it on the counter top and grabbed a glass from the draining board, sat herself down on a stool and set about filing the crystal glass to the very brim with the amber liquid.

“Take it easy on the liquor, kiddo” David said as he realized that if his daughter were to place a single drop more of the drink into her glass it would overflow and spill onto the counter.

“ _I cant do this_ ” Emma uttered as she placed the brim of the glass to her lips and drained its contents within seconds

“cant do what, Emma?” Snow asked cautiously as Emma poured herself another drink, her daughter was worrying her.

“ _This_. I cant pretend everything will be okay when it wont. I cant pretend this isn't going to stop hurting because it hurts like a bitch. How will the kid cope?” Emma muttered hurriedly, she was hurt and tearful and felt as if her world was split down the middle, she genuinely felt that she would never be okay, and she didn’t have any idea how to make it any better.

“Emma, you can do this.” David promised.

Over the next hour Emma drained the bottle of whiskey, after her second glass she became recluse and refused to talk to anyone, and after her third David attempted in vain to confiscate the bottle but Emma transported it back to her side and whenever he tried to reach for it again she would transport it ever so slightly out of his reach, after her fifth glass, transporting it became too much like hard work so she just held onto the bottle. By the time her sixth and final glass had been drained she was sliding off her stool and barely grasping on to consciousness, David wrapped an arm around her back and proceeded to lift Emma to the bed  her son was sleeping on bridal style before himself and his wife went to bed, bringing their son and his bassinet with them up to what would usually be Emma’s bed.

 

**\---**

“I’ll have a hot chocolate with cinnamon, please, Ruby” Emma muttered quietly as she placed the Menu she had been staring at for the last twenty minutes back on the counter.

She spent the time waiting for her drink to arrive by watching the second hand on the clock behind the counter “one hundred and sixty four seconds… one hundred and sixty five seconds… one hundred and-“ her hot chocolate was placed in front of her, she thanked Ruby with a silent nod of her head and scooped the cinnamon topped whipped cream from the top of her hot chocolate in a way that to anybody else would seem absent minded but for Emma it was all she could focus on because every simple absent minded occurrence had become a mammoth task that needed her full attention because otherwise she would have a complete breakdown.

The door to Grannies opened and slammed with that much force it caused Emma to look up, she immediately  wished she hadn't as in front of her stood Henry, tall and slender, albeit muscled from his horse riding and running – he rode as it was a sport that Regina adored and he ran because that’s what Emma did. He was dressed in a suit and a black blazer that had once been too big on him, in fact, it had been that big it had swamped him and his hands were halfway up the sleeves and you could have fit two or three of his torso inside of it and it still would have been a comfortable fit. Now, the sleeves were a quarter inch too short on his arms and although the body of the jacket was still loose, there was no way the boy and a duplicate would fit in as Henry was no longer a fourteen year old boy who wept night after night away In his grandparents’ apartment but a nineteen year old man who had returned to 108 Miflin Street and had claimed it as his own – he kept his mothers rooms how they  had been but the house was his by rights, though no one would dare touch it even if it wasn’t.

Henry stormed across the diner and approached his mother, “we need to talk.” He said sharply “follow me” he said in the same tone and Emma nodded and followed her son out of the diner and into his car, it was the old Bentley Regina once drove through the streets of Storybrooke he pulled out of the car park and drove with speed to a clearing in the woods where he parked  the car and got out, opting to stand rather than sit on the hood like he often did when he came to this location.

Emma got out of the car and did sit on the hood, looking away from the boy she had once grown to love but had now grown away from.

“YOU CAN’T KEEP DOING THIS” the teenager shouted, his chocolate hair messy and his caramel eyes burning with anger “YOU CAN’T JUST DISAPPEAR WHENEVER THERE'S A BIRTHDAY OR ANNIVERSARY OR WHATEVER OTHER EXCUSE YOU FIND. YOU CANT RUN AND HIDE IN THE DINER OR IN YOUR FLAT DRINKING WHISKEY OR SLEEPING. YOU CANT HIDE THE FACT THAT _SHE’S GONE MOM_! SHES GONE! SHES BLOODY GONE AND I THOUGHT ID LOST ONE MOTHER THAT DAY BUT MY GOD IT FEELS LIKE I'VE LOST _TWO_. YOU GAVE UP! YOU WEREN'T THERE TO LOOK AFTER ME AND YOU SAY ITS HARD BUT YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW THE BEGINNING OF HOW HARD IT IS I STARTED THAT DAY LOOKING FORWARD TO A DINNER WITH MY TWO MOMS AND ENDED IT IN THE CHARMING’S APARTMENT CRYING OVER THE LOSS OF ONE MOM ONLY TO LOSE YOU TOO.” His voice cracked and tears split down his face “ _I LOST YOU_ AND THAT HURTS MORE BECAUSE I COULDN’T DO ANYTHING TO SAVE HER BUT I'VE DONE **EVERYTHING** TO SAVE **YOU** AND YOU WONT LET ME” by this point Emma was crying too because something had snapped within her and she knew that everything her son was saying was true. The day that he lost Regina was the day he lost Emma too and it broke her heart to realize she had been such a terrible person these last five years. Henry had done everything possible to try to make Emma talk to him, to try to make her see that it does get better because even if it does still hurt like a bitch life goes on and eventually it gets  better. Her son had tried everything to get her to love him again, though truly she had never stopped, and she had shut him out every time for fear of getting hurt without realizing how much she was hurting herself and the son she claimed to care about.

Emma slid herself off the edge of the hood and walked to her son who had spent the last five minutes pacing back and forth that rapidly that he had worn a trail into the ground beneath his shoes, she stood in his track, effectively stopping him from pacing any further and reached out to him, he accepted this offer of a hug and stepped into the embrace of his mother, he rested his chin on her head as over the last five years he had grown to well over half a foot above his mother, the two of them stayed in the embrace for as long as they could, mother and son wrapped around each other for several minutes. Henry eventually stepped back and Emma saw that he still had the scarf he wore everyday when he was younger draped around his neck.

As she stepped back she saw the son she had left behind five years ago when she turned to a whiskey bottle instead of her parents, she saw her heartbroken son who had spent many a night weeping into his grandparents’ shoulders because hers was not a shoulder offered to the young boy. She saw the years she had missed although she had been there for them in boy, but not in spirit or mind, she saw when her son had watched her run for miles upon miles and he had learnt to run just as far, just as fast so he could be near her. She saw his first crush and his first girlfriend, Grace, and how smitten he had been, and how he felt he could relate to her because she had lost her mother when she was young in the same way Henry had lost Regina and how she had lost her father in the same way Henry had lost Emma. She saw her sons gradual change into the man he is now, the boy who had grown tired of being rejected by his mother, the boy who had wanted to show her it gets better years ago and suddenly reached her even though neither of them knew why this time had changed things between them, why this time had shown Emma that she needed to be a mother and a daughter as she had pushed her parents away too. She saw her sons mended heart and that although it would always be damaged, it was functioning and loving and beautiful. As Emma stepped away, she saw that she loved her son more than anything and that she wanted to focus on him, that she wanted to change for him.

They looked at each other and smiled, real, genuine smiles that filled one another's heart with warmth and happiness. They returned to the Bentley where a conversation about normal, mundane things which a mother would normally have with her son occurred as Henry drove them both to the Charming's apartment, they let themselves into the flat where Emma's parents stood still, shocked their daughter had turned up at their apartment, but not only that – she was smiling.

She walked over to them and hugged them both, promising to be better, promising to live a life worth living with her parents, her son and her brother who was running circles around the four of them. She promised not to hide and not to drink herself into the oblivion she knew so well. She promised not to become a shell of herself as she had the last five years. She promised to love and to be loved.

She stayed at her parents’ apartment that night, knowing that it does get better, and that she can do this.


End file.
